the
character which comes of rumor. Men who had such stones, frequently had
also serious reasons for wishing to hide the fact from public
knowledge. Some who had them, stole them; others bought them knowing
that they were stolen. It is told that one fine diamond crystal of
upwards of 200 carats was bought by a dealer of a Kaffir for £15. The
early history of many noble gems is enshrouded to hide the knavery
which escorted them from the mine to the cutting wheel. Those who knew,
would not tell of the interval between the disappearance of Louis XIV's
blue diamond from the Garde-Meuble and the appearance of the blue
diamond called the " Hope." Nor would those who know, dare to let it be
publicly known, whence some of the great African diamonds came, and how
from hand to hand they passed to the cutter. There are enough large
diamonds known to have come from the Cape, however, from the early
working of the mines onward, to show how prolific of large stones those
fields are. The climax was thought to have been reached when on June
30, 1893, a Kaffir picked up a crystal, while loading a truck in the
Jagersfontein mine, weighing 971-3/4 carats. The man contrived to
secrete it without being observed by the white overseer standing near
by, but delivered it to the manager himself later. Immediately the
whole civilized world was informed of the great discovery. After five
centuries, the boast of India was eclipsed, and the " Great Mogul," to
which every writer on the subject had referred as the greatest diamond
of the world, was relegated to second place in the history of gems. The
enormous and precious crystal, at once estimated to be worth fabulous
